


these things will change

by transstevebucky



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Asexual Character, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, M/M, New Year's Eve, Nonbinary Character, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:43:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Louis’s flopped over Harry’s lap, scrolling through his phone, when he gets the message.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It feels a little like something bursts in his chest, because he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t even known he’d wanted it, and now looking at the small “Z” at the top of his screen, he wonders why he couldn’t have got this earlier. Why Zayn wants to ruin him this badly.</i>
</p><p>or; Louis and Zayn spend New Year's Eve together, and work some things out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these things will change

**Author's Note:**

> aaa this is just a tiny thing i thought about and i figured it needed to happen, SO here it is! i hope you enjoy it >:)
> 
> (title is taken from taylor swift's 'change')

Louis’s flopped over Harry’s lap, scrolling through his phone when he gets the message.

It feels a little like something bursts in his chest, because he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t even known he’d wanted it, and now looking at the small “Z” at the top of his screen, he wonders why he couldn’t have got this earlier. Why Zayn wants to ruin him this badly.

“Oh,” he mumbles, tears already prickling behind his eyes, and he wishes this weren’t his immediate response to seeing a message from his (ex?) best mate, but it is, and he hates it.

“Babe?” Harry asks, fingers automatically looping through the hairs at the back of Louis’s neck, and in any other situation it would help, but there’s so many feelings burning through his mind like acid that it feels like he’s just going to burn him instead.

“It’s,” the words get stuck somewhere around his midsection, “um. It’s Zayn.”

The hand curled around his neck freezes, Harry going silent above him, because he knows, he knows what this means. He knows what the plan for this year was meant to be, what his resolution was, and Zayn never gave him the chance. He left him in the dust before he could ever tell him, and that. Hurts.

“What did he say?” He can feel the shake in Harry’s voice, with the way his head is resting on his sternum, and he thinks that’s a little too close to home. That whole shaking thing, the feeling nervous to let the words sit in the air, like if it’s voiced it’s one more nail in the coffin. It’s how he’s lived his life for months, now, on a knife’s edge just waiting for the drop to come and swallow him alive.

“Does it matter?” He responds, and there might be a slight twitch in his hands but he ignores it.

Harry breathes a sigh, which is the tiniest bit insulting, but Louis guesses he can understand. Louis’s not the only one affected by all this, and he knows that, but Zayn was always his best friend, the person he trusted with his life, and then Zayn let that crumble, and he’s not sure what they are any more. If they’re anything.

“Of course it matters,” his fingers curl tighter against the tendons in the back of Louis’s neck, “it’s worrying you, everything that worries you matters.”

Louis wrinkles his nose, because that actually sounds pretty fake (he’s an expert in putting other people first, which Zayn always said was a flaw, but. Then Zayn left, so.)

“I need to check, don’t I?”

Harry presses his mouth to the back of his head, removes his hand, and wriggles out from under him. “I’ll be in the study when you need me, okay? I know how much that whole thing hurt you, and you need to be alone, and I get that. I love you.”

There’s not tears behind Louis’s eyes. There’s not. It’s glass. He swears it’s glass.

“Love you, too.”

It takes him a while to unlock his phone, fingers trembling so hard he keeps nearly flinging it across the room (which doesn’t sound like a bad idea, now he thinks about it, but.) When he does, there’s the struggle of then actually clicking his messages, the bright red one staring up at him like a challenge to a fight. He could go for a fight right now.

He does it, and clicks on Zayn’s message before he can just see the preview and freak himself out.

_ Z, 4:58pm:  
_ my new years resolution was to tell you i loved you and i didn’t want to fail. x

He doesn’t know how to respond, tears already starting to overflow over his lids, mouth wobbling to try and keep the panic inside of him, where it won’t hurt anyone else. He can’t deal with this. He doesn’t want to have to deal with this; to have to cope with Zayn’s guilt and feel fine about it, when he cut his chest open and left him alone.

The response that comes instead of the yelling, instead of his furious capitalized “fuck you fuck you fuck you”, is an invitation. Because he’s weak, and spineless, and he wants Zayn back no matter how hard the knife digs itself into his back in return.

_ L _ ,  _ 5:09pm:  
_ we can meet up. i’d rather do mine in person. x

The response is hasty, and there’s something soothing about the fact Zayn was waiting for it, for his response, like he’s missed him back just as hard, just as violently.

_ Z, 5:10pm: _   
i’m in london. you know where i’ll be. x

 

++   
  


Harry kisses him goodbye, because he always does, and then he’s shrugging on his coat and climbing into his car, trying to act like his hands won’t stop shaking. This might not be safe on the road, but. That doesn’t matter, not really. Maybe if he crashes before he arrives, he can pretend his last thoughts weren’t  _ I love you, I miss you, why can’t you just come home to me. _

The drive there is spent with him yelling at himself that it’s a bad idea, and then shutting up for minutes on end, before starting up again. He’s conflicted, is the thing, because on the one hand he wants nothing more than to see Zayn, but on the other, he’s terrified it won’t be the same. That what they had is broken, and any attempts to fix it will be futile.

_ L, 6:43pm:  
_ i’m at the gate. please let me in this time. x

He tries to forget, sometimes, that he hasn’t gone here multiple times since Zayn left him gasping for air, sobbing on his bathroom floor with wine stained hands and lips because he wouldn’t tell him why he’d left. Why he’d decided Louis wasn’t worth it any more, when he’d been promising that they were infinite.

He tries forgetting that Zayn broke him, over and over, sending him messages about how they were broken, about how they weren’t forever, about how he wished the fucking tattoo was never there, that no one noticed he was letting it fade. And he gave as good as he got, hate and vitriol and voice messages singing Adele down the phoneline, because he doesn’t back down. He can’t forget, though, can’t itch Zayn away from his skin, from his memories, can’t cut him out of his life, because he’ll always be something to him, this pressure in his chest that tightens when he looks around and realises he isn’t there.

The gates open, and he pulls inside, and the fact he did, that he didn’t just keep them closed and send him a text telling him to fuck off. Maybe they aren’t as broken as he thought.

He climbs out of the car, hands in his pockets as he makes his way to the side door, because Zayn never uses the front one (“It’s an invitation for trouble.”).

The door opens before he even gets there, Zayn’s tattooed hand curling around the frame, and he’ll maintain to his dying day that he doesn’t nearly stop breathing at that, that he doesn’t speed up and try and sort his face into a mask of nothing, but. It’s useless, because.

“You’re here,” he breathes aloud, breath turning to smoke in the cold air.

Zayn’s nose wrinkles, eyes twinkling, “It is my house.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he responds, and he knows he sounds giddy, but that’s because he is.

“No, it’s,” Zayn grunts scratching the back of his neck and then sliding his fingers down his clean shaven face, “I know. I just keep trying to forget everything and make it better, but. I think we might actually need to talk about it to do that.”

Louis slides past him, ignoring the familiar bolt of energy up his side as his fingers graze the edge of his jacket. He’s an expert, by now, at pretending that he and Zayn aren’t oddly close for friends, that it doesn’t verge on romantic, even if the feelings are platonic. He’s sure there’s a term for it, but. They’ll look later, when they’re not together on a knife’s edge, staring at each other in the entryway of Zayn’s mini-mansion.

"Yeah, probably,” he glances around, taking in the slice of kitchen he can see to the right of him, the living room he can see beyond that. Open plan, because Zayn’s an artsy, indie fuck and asked for Louis’s input when he was first decorating.

“You can go in, you know,” Zayn responds, voice a little husky, like he’s been smoking, “nothing’s going to attack you.”

“Not even that pitbull I saw on your Insta?” He retorts, before feeling his cheeks burn bright, because. He didn’t mean to let slip that he’d been creeping, but.

Zayn’s eyes glint with mischief, the look he’s given Louis so many times over the years it feels like falling into a timeless pit he can’t climb out of. Zayn’s timeless, this pillar of energy and comfort and home, even after months of feeling like he was never meant to be his after all.

“You saw that?” He’s too smug, eyes getting crinkly and excited, the way he always does when he’s trying to tamp down on his feelings.

“As if you’ve never stalked my insta,” he blusters, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on one of the coat hooks (decorated like Green Lantern, because Zayn’s nerdiness knows no bounds).

Zayn presses his knuckles to the small of his back, and he almost jumps, muscles tightening, because it’s been months since he’s had those hands on him, warm and smooth even through layers of clothing. It’s too soon, he knows, ignoring it will just cause more issues further along, but. It’s nice, regardless, pretending they’re okay when they’re barely sewn back together.

“You’re still a loser,” Zayn’s voice is soft, gentle, and there’s something about it that rings so truly of  _ coming home  _ that it aches in his chest.

“You’re the one with Green Lantern coat racks,” he bites his lip, “and New Year’s resolutions about telling people you love them.”

Zayn’s hand stills, and he mumbles, “You know I do. I just thought. You might not remember, and you should. You deserve people loving you, however that is.”

Louis stays quiet, eyes burning again as Zayn leads him through the house, pointing out some of the stuff he hasn’t seen before with a loud excited voice, and when they finally get to their destination, his heart leaps into his throat.

It’s a balcony, with a soft couch and fairy lights, but it’s the pictures hung on the walls that make him feel like he’s swallowed glass. Paintings and light sketches and murals, coloured and not, all with one key theme. It feels a little like walking into their personal timeline all over again.

“These are us,” he whispers, “all of these drawings, the stag and the tiger, and everything else, the bus and. And those pictures of tattoos, those are. They’re all us, aren’t they?”

Zayn breathes through his nose as he sits down, looking like he’s going to pass out any minute from the stress, and God, that burns somewhere close to home.

“All of it, yeah,” he starts, before freezing, like he’s trying to make sure he’s sorting out his words carefully, “I wanted to show you, but. I swear that’s not the only reason I brought you over, or anything, I just. Wanted to remind you that I love you, and that I hate that I was trying to break us more than we’d already managed to.”

Louis rubs at the space between his eyes, trying to hold back the swelling of emotions that’s encompassed all of him since the message first popped up on his screen, and suddenly he knows.

It feels a little like a knife sinking between his ribs, cutting him open from the inside out, tearing him in two in a way it hadn’t before. Because they’re not broken. Everything around him, every last memory that’s flitting through his mind in vivid technicolour, none of it tells him they’re broken. It tells him they were just worried they were going to be, trying to make attempts to stop it before it happened.

They’re terrified, he realises, focusing on Zayn as he bites his lip and strokes his cat (Louis forgets his name all the time, it’s ridiculous), but they’re not broken. Broken people don’t act like best friends the second they meet up again after months of vitriol; they’re not whole, yet, because there’s so much fear surrounding them, binding them together out of spite.

"We’re not broken,” he voices aloud, and the tremor in his voice doesn’t scare him, because he’s been scared for so long now it feels as easy as breathing, “you needed a break, and you were scared, and you were ill and needed help, and there’s nothing about that that’s wrong. We just got worried we were going to end up breaking it, you know?”

Zayn blinks, brown eyes slightly glazed over with what he’ll say aren’t tears.

“But I told you I hated you,” he responds, “I told you we weren’t ever meant to be anything.”

Louis rolls his eyes, because of course, the sentimental arsehole that he is, Zayn’d focus on that.

“You were petrified for months, Zee,” he sits down, shaky, “you were petrified we’d hate you, and you lashed out, and it hurt and that’s okay. But I love you, regardless, and you spent months painting us, like the loser you are, and how’s that meant to be broken? Like, I don’t mean to be rude, love, but there’s a shrine to us here.”

Zayn giggles, bright and sudden, and it’s like the sun’s come out again, like all of a sudden winter’s disappeared and he doesn’t need to wear a coat, because his boy’s happy, and there’s nothing he needs more than that.

“I missed you,” he grins, like he’s letting out a secret, “and I didn’t know how to cope with it, if it wasn’t talking to you directly, because that just. Made it hard all over again. Hearing your voice when the only thing I wanted was to be next to you, Christ.”

Louis’s chest feels tight, warm and achy in a good way. But he can’t let Zayn spill his heart all over his concrete balcony without saying anything about why he came here, on tonight of all nights.

“I have something to tell you, and um. I know I said on the text, and everything, that I’d tell you something, but. I’m a bit-”

“Nothing you can say will make me hate you,” Zayn talks over him, hand locking over Louis’s jaw as he rolls his eyes, “stop acting like I’m going to fight you for being near me.”

Louis breathes out a laugh against Zayn’s palm, before pushing it away.

The fear’s there, the way it was when he came out to his mum, and to Harry, and Liam and Niall, the way it was the night he almost came out to Zayn, before he didn’t pick up. But fear’s nothing, right now, not when he’s got Zayn pressed against him from thigh to shoulder, eyes golden in the light of the evening.

“I’m asexual,” he begins, and Zayn’s face is carefully blank, “and nonbinary. I’m, uh, not a boy, or a girl. I identify as agender? I don’t know if you know what that is, but. Basically, I’m-”

“Genderless, yeah, I know,” Zayn says, and there’s a quirk to his mouth, this tiny edge of a smile that makes Louis feel warm to his toes, “that’s fine, babe, I’m so proud of you.”

The babe makes him feel raw inside, like his skin’s been turned inside out. He feels a little like the Grinch, heart three sizes too big.

“D’you want, like, different pronouns and stuff? Because I’ll do it.”

And. He hadn’t expected that, is a little startled by it, because no one’s ever asked about that immediately before, not even Harry.

“Um, no, I like he and him fine for now, but,” he lets out a breathy giggle, Zayn’s fingers twining with his on their laps, “thank you for asking. No one ever has before.”

Zayn frowns, like a concerned puppy, resting his head on Louis’s shoulder and wrapping one arm around his waist, and Louis thinks he’s going to stop there, before he wriggles onto his lap and hugs him like that, thighs bracketing Louis’s hips and arms around his shoulders.

Louis’s own arms stretch out, curling around Zayn’s skinny waist, holding on tight, trying to put into the hug how much this means to him, that he’d asked and that he cares, and that he loves him, through everything.

“I’ve got some sparklers,” he mumbles after a few seconds, tickling the space behind Louis’s ear, “if you want.”

He doesn’t really, but. Anything with Zayn is a good thing.

“Of course.”

 

++

 

It takes a while for Zayn to find them, what with the way his arm’s curled around Louis’s waist and he refuses to let go, but when he does he presses a victorious kiss to his cheek and giggles, again, and something like light spreads through Louis’s veins at the sound.

They move outside again, onto the far end of the balcony, where there’s no chance of accidentally setting the couch alight with their combined inability, overlooking the city. It’s so bright, and Louis’s a little excited about the fact that he’s going to be ringing the new year in with Zayn (even if he’s slightly guilty about not being with Harry, but. He’s with Zayn, and Harry understands that.) That there’s going to be a whole celebration that feels like it’s made for them, and the way they’re curled up around each other, breathing white smoke into the air.

Zayn’s shit at sparklers, as it would happen, seemingly incapable of lighting them, and Louis’s pretty sure that the big ginger furball behind them is judging him ferociously, but. Seeing him struggle’s actually kind of entertaining.

“Why won’t it fucking  _ light _ ,” he hisses, lip bitten between his teeth, and Louis keeps forgetting there’s all these things he hasn’t seen on him for months, and each time he does it feels like a pocket of air inflates in his chest. He’s pretty sure he’d be floating, if he could.

“Maybe because you’re holding it wrong?” He asks, finally relenting, because as funny as it is, he also wants to actually get to do this before tomorrow evening.

Zayn blushes, turning it over in his hands before trying again, and it lights, the fizz erupting in their ears.

“Don’t burn yourself,” Zayn hastily instructs as he passes it over, “I’m not going to A&E on New Year’s Eve.”

“Thanks, mum.” Louis mutters in return, whilst also being secretly thankful that Zayn cares. Like, he knew, but. Reminders are always nice.

The sparks reflect off of Zayn’s face, like he’s made of fire, and it’s so pretty there’s a tiny part of Louis that wants to cry about it, but he won’t. Because he’s a strong, independent person.

“You’re doing really well,” Zayn grins, like he can’t hold it back, and. Maybe a tiny tear falls, but no one has to know.

 

++

 

When Big Ben finally strikes twelve, they’re sat on the sofa overlooking the city, fireworks reflecting in their eyes, and Louis thinks,  _ I could do this every year for the rest of my life,  _ and when Zayn responds by clenching their hands together, he thinks it’s a confirmation.

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are appreciated
> 
> and you can find my tumblr [here](http://makeupfic.tumblr.com/) and the fic post [here](http://makeupfic.tumblr.com/post/136352990261/these-things-will-change-zaynlouis-32k)


End file.
